Devices of Wonder
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/devices/
The Getty Museum cleverly uses our new media toy, the World Wide Web, to showcase this exhibition of media devices from the past and present. Included are inventions that present visual information or optical illusions, such as Indonesian shadow puppets, magic lantern slides, pop-up books, thaumatropes, and anamorphic images. Both animated and non-animated versions are available, and there are tradeoffs with each. In the animated version, users can see each device in action, but it takes a little longer to simply get each device's name and information about how it works. For example, the animated thaumatrope works pretty well, since it is easy to see that it is a card with two images on the back and front that fuse when the card is spun on a string. It's a little harder to figure out how the choreutoscope works from starting with the animated version, although one gets to watch the skeleton dance. The non-animated version immediately informs us that this is a hand-cranked magic lantern slide. [DS]
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Toolkit to End Violence Against Women [.pdf]
http://toolkit.ncjrs.org/
The Toolkit to End Violence Against Women was launched last month by the National Advisory Council on Violence Against Women, which is chaired by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Each of the Toolkit's sixteen chapters (.pdf) is geared toward a specific audience (e.g., Native Women, the US Military, the entertainment industry, health and mental care systems, etc.) and stresses ways in which these audience can increase prevention efforts and better services for victims. Clicking on a chapter title brings up a bullet-pointed list of things that particular audience can do to make a difference and links to the .pdf version of the chapter and an "action card" (a .pdf version of the bullet points with explication). [TK]
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Afghanistan: Land in Crisis -- National Geographic [RealPlayer]
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/landincrisis/
This new special feature from National Geographic collects information on Afghanistan, including articles, maps, lesson plans, current news, and more. Some of the site's notable features include an archived Webcast of an October 22 screening of "National Geographic Explores a Changing World" and panel discussion on the Middle East and Afghanistan; a bibliography of National Geographic's print resources related to the topic; and a regularly updated interactive map of Afghanistan displaying cities and attacks, ethnic groups, drought and vegetation, and more. Teachers will want to check out the four lesson plans, which are geared to various age groups K-12. [TK]
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Criminal Enforcement Against Terrorists
http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/terrorism/report011203.html
Syracuse-based Transactional Records Clearinghouse (TRAC), a non-partisan group monitoring federal staffing, spending, and enforcement activities, recently posted this report covering referrals for prosecution in international and domestic terrorist cases. It is difficult for the American public to monitor the federal governments efforts to find and prosecute terrorists because of the necessary secrecy that surrounds the feds' anti-terrorist activities. With this in mind, TRAC obtained (under court order) 131 computer tapes "with data that offer the American people the most up-to-date and complete view ever available about how the government is enforcing the law against international and domestic terrorists." The data graphs, tables, and text available at this site are a sampling of findings about the 1,338 referrals classified as domestic or international terrorism-related from October 1996 through September 2001. These findings reveal that, during the years 1997-2000, there were between 40-60 referrals for prosecution involving international terrorism, but in 2001, this number jumped to 204. It also shows that federal prosecutors declined to bring charges against more than two out of three of the criminal suspects who they classified as being involved in domestic or international terrorism. The investigative agencies included the FBI; the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the US Marshal Service; the IRS; and many others. [HCS]
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NYC Surveillance Cameras
NYC Surveillance Camera Project [.pdf]
http://www.mediaeater.com/cameras/
i-SEE v.911: "Now more than ever" [Flash]
http://www.appliedautonomy.com/isee/
These two sites focus on the increasing numbers of surveillance cameras in New York City. The first provides a .pdf-formatted map of the more than 2,300 camera locations throughout New York as well as text listings broken down by community. The information was compiled by volunteers from the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). In addition to information on camera locations, in the news section of the site, users will find links to related Websites, FAQs, and sites related to taxi cameras and traffic cameras. The second site, from the Institute for Applied Autonomy, contains an interactive map of New York with which users can map routes through the city. Users click on their starting point and destination, and i-SEE will generate a route for them with the fewest surveillance cameras. Note that we had trouble using the map with Netscape on a Mac, but no trouble with Internet Explorer. Both of these sites are unabashedly anti-surveillance technology and will be appreciated by New Yorkers concerned with civil liberties issues. [TK]
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Holocaust Era in Croatia, 1941-1945 [RealPlayer, Javascript]
http://www.ushmm.org/jasenovac/
This new exhibit from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) focuses on the years following the German invasion of Yugoslavia, when the Ustasa regime founded the Independent State of Croatia and set up concentration camps there. Jasenovac was the largest of the camps, and the USHMM site features artifacts from the Jasenovac Memorial Area Collection. There are three main sections of the exhibit: memorial, history, and collection. The first is a sort of art piece, a sobering screen with shifting pictures and voices. The latter two offer images of artifacts, explication of events, oral histories, video, photographs, and more. The site is available in both low and high bandwidth versions. Note that Mac users with Netscape may have some trouble with some of the site's multimedia features. [TK]
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Special Report: 2001 Odyssey Mission to Mars
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/mars_odyssey_sr.html
Space.com offers this special look at the Odyssey Mission, the latest robotic probe circling Mars that delivered its first pictures back to Earth earlier this fall. If you can get past Space.com's flashy pop-up advertisements, you'll find interesting features such as "Water or No Water," an article discussing the search for groundwater on the Red Planet. Links to infrared imagery from the mission, an animation of the canyon-riddled topography and a discussion of how the search for water is conducted and how it relates to the search for life on Mars are furnished. Other highlights of this Web feature include a schematic of the Odyssey craft; an article about NASA's "faster, better, cheaper" approach to space exploration; numerous videos from their SpaceTV program; images (digital elevation models, infrared, photographic) of Mars from NASA telescopes and earlier missions such as the Viking and the Mars Global Surveyor; and of course, the latest infrared images coming from the Odyssey Mission itself. [HCS]
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